


right place, right time, wrong guy

by nessismore



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Darcy/Steve Holiday Fic/Art Exchange, F/M, Misunderstandings, New Year's Eve, Undercover Darcy-is-Tony's-daughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nessismore/pseuds/nessismore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony hosts a New Year's Eve party. Darcy has a date, and it isn't Steve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	right place, right time, wrong guy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).



> The final fic of the Darcy/Steve Holiday Exchange! A pinch hit after an eleventh hour drop, I chose the prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Tony hosts a New Year's Eve party. Darcy has a date, and it isn't Steve_
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks to katertots for handholding, cheerleading, and beta'ing as I wrote this fic. And thanks to all of _you_ for making this exchange such a success! You're all awesome!

“Darcy, I’ve been looking for you all night.” Darcy turned and pasted a smile on her face. Logic told her that she couldn’t spend all night avoiding anyone and everyone she knew—including her “date”—but she’d been giving it the old college try.

Of course it was Pepper who’d found her.

“Pep! I’d love to stay and chat, but nature calls and I’d hate to stain the Aubusson, so…” Darcy tried to make a getaway, but Pepper snagged her wrist. For someone who looked like a stiff breeze would blow her all the way to Fiji, her grip was remarkably strong.

“See, I’d believe you if both you and I didn’t know that the bathroom was in the opposite direction.”

“Guess I got…turned…around…” Darcy trailed off her lame explanation when Pepper raised a skeptical brow. Shoulders slumped in resignation, Darcy tried a different tactic. “Yeah, figured you wouldn’t buy it. How are you doing? Happy New Year!”

“Do not try to deflect, young lady,” Pepper said sternly.

“I hate when you talk to me like I’m a juvenile delinquent.”

“I hate when you act like one.” Pepper patted her hand, somehow gentling the rebuke. “Now, why are you avoiding everybody? 

Because it was Pepper, and because Pepper could fix anything—she’d certainly cleaned up enough of her dad’s messes—Darcy let her mask drop. “I think I messed up, Pep.”

Pepper squeezed Darcy’s wrist reassuringly. “Oh, Darcy. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as you think it is.”

“I—“

Darcy’s explanation was cut off by an excited, “There you are!” She groaned. There was the date she’d been avoiding. Jake Rutherford, agent and asshole extraordinaire. What the hell had she been thinking? He wrapped an arm around her waist—too roughly, which had Darcy stumbling. “I should have known it would be the CEO of Stark Industries monopolizing my date.”

For the first time in a long time, Pepper looked shocked. “Your…date?” She turned to Darcy, an in an uncharacteristic show of rudeness, said, “That’s not Steve.”

“No!” Darcy exclaimed in mock wonder. “I knew there was something different about him when he picked me up.”

Pepper shot Darcy her We Are Not Amused look, took her wrist once again and wrenched her away from Rutherford. “If you’ll excuse us, Agent Rutherford, Darcy and I have some family business to discuss.” She dragged Darcy away without waiting for a response. “Darcy, what are you doing here with not Steve?”

“I told you I made a mistake,” Darcy said defensively. “That would be the mistake.”

Pepper looked heavenward—something Darcy had seen way too many times over the last twenty-three years—and sighed in exasperation. “No wonder why Steve is looking so miserable—why, Darcy?”

“Excuse me, why are you assuming this is my fault?” Darcy demanded. “For your information, Steve was the one who asked someone else first.”

Pepper stared in disbelief. “He wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, well now you know how I felt.” Darcy had assumed—hell, _everyone_ had assumed—that Darcy and Steve were going to go together to her dad’s New Year’s Eve party. After all, they practically lived in each others’ pockets when she wasn’t in class and when he wasn’t on missions. The way he always made it a point to seek her out had made her stomach flutter. Everyone else had noticed, too, and Jane and Natasha teased her about it all the time.

So when Penelope Teasdale, one of the HR managers at SI, had exclaimed over the fact that Steve had asked her to the party last week, no one had been more shocked than Darcy. Or more heartbroken. She hadn’t believed it at first, but when Penelope’s phone had rung and she’d flashed the screen at everyone who’d looked, Darcy recognized Steve’s number. Part of her had still held on to the belief that Penelope had lied, but why would anybody lie about something so stupid? And Steve had been acting so strangely the last couple of weeks, almost like he was avoiding her. Maybe this was why. He hadn’t known how to let her down easy. When Jake had asked her to the party a few days later, Darcy had said yes, mostly because she knew Steve didn’t like the agent much at all. She should have realized that Steve rarely disliked someone without reason, and the more time she spent around Rutherford, the more she found to dislike.

“Darcy, there must have been some misunderstanding.”

Darcy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course. When she was the one to blame, it was all Darcy’s fault, but when it was Steve there had to be some sort of misunderstanding. Typical.

“I saw him here with her. Not much to misunderstand.”

“If you saw him,” Pepper insisted, “then you know he looks as miserable as you do. He’s already had five glasses of champagne.”

“The man can’t get drunk, Pepper.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not trying. It’s almost midnight. Just go talk to him please?”

Darcy sighed. Maybe she had misjudged him. It couldn’t hurt to talk to him. No, that was a lie because it could hurt a whole hell of a lot, but what did she have to lose? Certainly not her dignity. She’d probably dropped that around the time she’d ducked behind the curtains to hide from her date. “I will,” Darcy said, and even if she wasn’t sure she meant it, she knew Pepper wasn’t going to let up until Darcy actually did it. 

“Good. It won’t be fun, but I know you can do it.” In a rare show of PDA, Pepper dropped an affectionate kiss on Darcy’s head, ruffled her hair, then walked away.

Before she threw herself back onto the altar of humiliation, Darcy decided to do a little reconnoitering. Steve wasn’t hard to find. He was one of the tallest men in the room, and Penelope’s artificially tinkling laughter tended to carry. Penelope had glued herself right by Steve’s side and it didn’t look like she was budging anytime soon. She looked like she was having the time of her life, but Steve…well, he looked just as miserable as Pepper said he did.

Her heart fluttered, her stomach swooped, that much hadn’t changed in the last week. And then he looked up and caught her eye, and there was a look that made her stomach plummet to her toes. He looked so regretful, and she missed him, and maybe it was just some stupid misunderstanding.

Before she could move towards him, Rutherford found her. “The countdown is about to start.”

She was relieved he was there, actually, because she figured if she was going to throw herself at Steve, she probably should break it to her date first. The timing sucked, but what could you do? “Jake, the thing is…”

But the countdown started, and everyone around them was shouting more than a little drunkenly. Rutherford wasn’t paying any attention to what Darcy was saying, and she sighed. Waiting til after the ball dropped looked like her only option.

“10…9…8…7…6…5…”

Her eyes flicked to Steve, for courage, and she let out a strangled sound at what she saw. The countdown wasn’t even over, but Penelope was wrapped around him, practically swallowing Steve whole. And he wasn’t pulling away.

As if from a distance, she heard the rest of the countdown. “4…3…2…1…Happy New Year!” But she wasn’t paying attention. Her eyes were still on Steve and his date, and when her own date pressed a wet, sloppy kiss to her lips, she didn’t pull away.

When Rutherford broke the kiss, Darcy looked instinctively toward Steve. He was staring right at  her, looking like she’d slapped him, and that was the last straw. “I have to go,” she blurted out—or at least she thought she did.

Then she ran, her cheeks burning, tears stinging her eyes. This was stupid. She was stupid. She’d almost made it back to her apartment in the Tower when Steve caught up with her.

“Go away,” she said, not wanting to see how close she was to tears.

“What’s wrong? Was it Rutherford?” he demanded. 

“I really just don’t want to talk to you right now.

“What—what did I do?”

She didn’t want an argument. The last thing she wanted was an argument, but she couldn’t help sniping, “Don’t you have something better to do, like trying to find Penelope’s tonsils with _your tongue_?”

He stared at her incredulously. “I—that’s rich coming from someone who was two seconds from making whoopee with Rutherford in the middle of the room. What are you doing here with him anyway?” He sounded pissed, which served to shove Darcy’s heartache to the back burner as anger overtook her.

She poked Steve hard in the chest. “You don’t have the right to be mad at me. _You’re_ the one who invited someone else.”

He looked at her in disbelief. “What are you talking about? I only agreed to go with Penelope after you said yes to Rutherford.”

“Right,” Darcy said with a scoff, “Penelope told everyone who was in earshot that you’d asked her, and oh look—you’re here with her.”

“I never asked her. She asked _me_ , and I only agreed because _you_ were already going with _someone else_.”

Darcy snorted in disbelief. “Why would she lie about that?”

And just like that, he deflated, anger gone. He just looked…lost. And damned if that didn’t break her heart all over again. “I don’t know. All I know is that the only person I wanted to go with to the party, to anything, was _you_.”

Darcy looked down at her feet and bit her lip. “Same goes.”

Steve reached out and clasped her hand in his. “I know we didn’t end the year right, but how about we start fresh?”

“Yeah?” Her lips kicked up in a small grin. “How do you propose we do that?”

“I know we’ve got some things to talk about,” he said solemnly, “but for tonight…”

Steve leaned in and captured her mouth in a soft, gentle kiss, his arms going around her to pull her into him. “Happy New Year,” he said softly.

Darcy smiled happily. “Happy New Year.”


End file.
